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New AMD EPYC-based Compute Engine family, now in beta
- lallysingh 7y agoWhat's the topology of these machines? Dual socket 64c chips with some reserved (or disabled)?
- wmf 7y agoThey don't say that but that's the only way to provide 224 threads.
- lallysingh 7y agoDarnit, I was hoping I was wrong and we were getting a hint of some new beast with 112 cores...
- bob1029 7y agoTheir topology tells far richer tales than the press releases when you dig deeper on the numbers. 224 threads = 112 HT cores = 2 x 56 core CPUs. This is 8 cores short of the 64 core flagship. 8 cores == 1 CCX. It seems exceedingly unlikely that AMD would produce a Rome CPU with 7 out of 8 CCX in perfect health, but have the 8th CCX completely missing (functionally). It seems more likely that the 8th CCX is there with all 8 cores, and that it is reserved for some other type of service. One possibility could be that there are higher guarantees of side channel protection at the CCX boundary, and google intends to use this for secure internal functions or sell to clients who have side channel sensitivity. Another may be that they simply want the hypervisor to have a very fat budget of 8 cores per socket to work with. Considering the amount of potential IO going on, this might be required in some cases.
- smueller1234 7y agoSee also boulos' comment: "As for 224, we've always reserved threads on each host for I/O and so on. Figure 2 from the Snap paper [1] is probably the best public reference. We also don't make it clear (on purpose) what size the underlying host processors are, though you can clearly guesstimate pretty easily." Ie. if there's even one thread reserved on the host, your speculation comes to naught. Sorry.
- tpetry 7y agoNow its getting really interesting: In the end you have to compare pricing for a vCore (which is a thread on a cpu) with per-thread performance on AMD vs. Intel. Does anyone know a benchmark like this? Epyc Processors are most often tested on heavy parallelizable tasks and not strictly single thread tasks.
- boulos 7y agoDisclosure: I work on Google Cloud. Performance is a tricky, multi-dimensional thing, so there are many benchmarks that try to map to different workloads. For example, specint is often used for exactly your "single threaded task" benchmark, but if what you work on is numerical computing, you mostly don't care (you want specfp at the least and even that is bad). Some people seem to really like Coremark these days. Others like specintrate. What kind of application do you care about? I'd guess plenty of folks here can provide a better estimate with that info.
- api 7y agoFrom what I've seen AMD's recent chips beat (sometimes outright destroy) Intel on multithreaded tasks, but on single-threaded tasks it's still a bit of a toss up and depends on the work load. Intel seems to still come out ahead on some heavy numeric and scientific type work loads, especially if vector instructions are used. The differences are not huge though, and AMD solidly wins on price/performance even in cases where it's a bit slower in absolute performance for single threaded work. At this point Intel literally only makes sense if you have one of those single threaded work loads where it still excels and you absolutely must have the fastest single thread performance.
- dilyevsky 7y agoIs that with spectre/meltdown/etc protection on?
- blattimwind 7y agoThese are VMs, the hosts have to run with these mitigations enabled.
- boulos 7y agoDisclosure: I work on Google Cloud. cvallejo is the PM, so ask her anything!
- JoshTriplett 7y agoDoes the new n2d machine type support nested virtualization? (Asking because Azure supports nested virtualization but only on some machine types. AWS doesn't support nested virtualization at all. Google Cloud seems to support nested virtualization on other machine types.) Also, why 224 rather than 256?
- boulos 7y agoWe do not yet support AMD's nested implementation (we do on Intel). But cvallejo is also the PM for Nested :). As for 224, we've always reserved threads on each host for I/O and so on. Figure 2 from the Snap paper [1] is probably the best public reference. We also don't make it clear (on purpose) what size the underlying host processors are, though you can clearly guesstimate pretty easily. [1] https://research.google/pubs/pub48630/ https://research.google/pubs/pub48630/
- QUFB 7y agoSpeaking of nested virtualization, are there any plans to support this on E2, or will we have to use other instance types?
- boulos 7y agoThe blocker here would be the need for supporting nested on AMD parts (as E2 can choose between Intel and AMD parts).
- JoshTriplett 7y ago> We do not yet support AMD's nested implementation (we do on Intel). Any particular reason for that limitation, or just "not implemented yet"? (Not asking for product roadmaps, just wondering if there's a specific technical issue that makes it more difficult to support.) > As for 224, we've always reserved threads on each host for I/O and so on. Figure 2 from the Snap paper [1] is probably the best public reference. That's helpful, thank you.
- dsign 7y agoCan those instances be used in GKE node pools?
- boulos 7y agoDisclosure: I work on Google Cloud. Should be, once the rollouts complete. So once you can see N2D types in the Console for your project, I think it'll just flow naturally to GKE.
- cvallejo 7y agoDisclosure: I also work on Google Cloud That's correct! Once the rollout completes, you will be able to use N2D instances for GKE!
- p_l 7y agoAnd if it doesn't, it was always possible to break GKE state into "offering" node types that were not supported. Source: me, using preemptible instances for a year before they got into GKE ;-) Modifying instance group templates is your friend.
- crazysim 7y agoYeah, this can be done for nested virtualization instances (images) too.
- simonebrunozzi 7y ago> Disclosure: I also work on Google Cloud Wow, half of the comments so far start with this disclosure! Tons of Google people lurking on HN :)
- gpm 7y agoToo be fair, it's just two of them answering questions, and one is both OP and the product manager.
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- m0zg 7y agoWell, they may be hypothetically "available" in us-central1, but they don't show up for me. All I see is "Cascade Lake powered" N2.
- JoshTriplett 7y agoLikewise. "gcloud beta compute machine-types list" doesn't show them in any zone.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- boulos 7y agoDisclosure: I work on Google Cloud. Sorry for the confusion. We should be more clear and explicitly state "now rolling out". Over the course of our multi-day rollout, different regions and the console will start showing these.
- Bluecobra 7y agoI saw it show up twice this morning in us-central1 and tried to create an instance but it created a "n1-standard-1" VM instead. I didn't realize this until I logged into the server and looked at /proc/cpuinfo and only saw one CPU and was disappointed. :(
- ensacco 7y agoWhat's the intent / timeline for N2D in other regions, e.g. us-west1?
- cvallejo 7y agodisclosure: I work at google! We will be expanding the regional footprint of N2D. US-west1 should come online in the first half of this year.
- colinmcdonald22 7y agoNot directly related, but do you know when we can expect to see N2 instances in us-east1-b? Currently they're in 2/3 of the zones, just one annoying zone short of being able to use it in my GKE cluster.
- pier25 7y agoWhat are the implications? Higher perf and/or lower price?
- kart23 7y agoLooks to be about $5/Month cheaper, based on this page: https://cloud.google.com/compute/all-pricing#n2_machine_types https://cloud.google.com/compute/all-pricing#n2_machine_type... Jeez, I didn't realize how expensive cloud compute was. I always wondered why my school still has a datacenter. Having your own servers still makes sense for a lot of orgs.
- acdha 7y agoIt’s a question of how dynamic your usage is and how much the better security and management features save you. If you have very consistent workloads with little idle hardware and modest admin needs you can beat cloud environments even with reservations but usually when I see the numbers it means major costs like staffing or power / HVAC aren’t being factored in.
- anthony_doan 7y agoIt's also expensive to get data out of cloud too. Getting data in is easy but getting it out will cost you.
- wmf 7y agoBasically. This is the best server processor.
- thedance 7y agoBig claim there. On what basis?
- Tuna-Fish 7y agoYou can pick almost any basis you like, it's still winning. Most performance, most performance per watt, most performance per cost. Also, more performance per thread than high-threadcount intel chips. (Although, some of their low-threadcount Xeons do have an edge on that one.) Oh, and best memory interface and best IO, too.
- privateSFacct 7y agoDoes AWS have a comparable offering? I haven't seen anything on EPYC - congrats to GCP for moving quickly. I'm mostly AWS based currently.
- wmf 7y agoStill "in the works": https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-new-amd-powered-compute-optimized-ec2-instances-c5a-c5ad/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-new-amd-powere...
- wolf550e 7y agoSee https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/04/amazon-ec2-t3a-instances-are-now-generally-available/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/04/amazon-ec...
- Jyaif 7y agoYour link is for the 1st gen EPYC cpus, while this announcement is for the 2nd gen.
- mdasen 7y agoSince people from Google Cloud are likely here, one thing I'd like to ask/talk about: are we getting too many options for compute? One of the great things about Google Cloud was that it was very easy to order. None of this "t2.large" where you'd have to look up how much memory and CPU that it has and potentially how many credits you're going to get per hour and such. I think Google Cloud is still easier, but it's getting harder to know what is the right direction. For example, the N2D instances are basically the price of the N1 instances or even cheaper with committed-use discounts. Given that they provide 39% more performance, should the N1 instances be considered obsolete once the N2D exits beta? I know that there could be workloads that would be better on Intel than AMD, but it seems like there would be little reason to get an N1 instance once the N2D exits beta. Likewise, the N2D has the basically same sustained-use price as the E2 instances (which only have the performance of N1 instances). What's the point of E2 instances if they're the same price? Shouldn't I be getting a discount given that Google can more efficiently use the resources? It's great to see the improvements at Google Cloud. I'm glad to see lower-cost, high-performance options available. However, I guess I'm left wondering who is choosing what. I look at the pricing and think, "who would choose an N1 or N2 given the N2D?" Sure, there are people with specific requirements, but it seems like the N2D should be the default in my mind. This might sound a bit like complaining, but I do love how I can just lookup memory and CPU pricing easily. Rather than having to remember name-mappings, I just choose from one of the families (N1, N2, E2, N2D) and can look at the memory and CPU pricing. It makes it really simple to understand what you're paying. It's just that as more families get added and Google varies how it applies sustained-use and committed-use discounts between the families, it becomes more difficult to choose between them. For example, if I'm going for a 1-year commitment, should I go with an E2 at $10.03/vCPU or an N2D at $12.65/vCPU. The N2D should provide more performance than the 26% price increase, yes? Why can't I get an EPYC based E-series to really drive down costs? Again, I want to reiterate that Google Cloud's simpler pricing is great, but complications have crept in. E2 machines don't get sustained-use discounts which means they're really only valuable if you're doing a yearly commitment or non-sustained-use. The only time N1 machines are cheaper is in sustained-use - they're the same price as Intel N2 machines if you're doing a yearly commitment or non-sustained-use. Without more guidance on performance differences between the N2D and N2, why should I ever use N2? I guess this is a bit of rambling to say, "keep an eye on pricing complexity - I don't like spending a lot of time thinking about optimizing costs".
- tempsy 7y agoAMD's stock is wild. It was around $2 just a few years ago and has been on a non-stop trend up to almost $60 today.
- sdesol 7y agoThey really are doing something disruptive. I can't quite remember if this is correct (it has been a while since I last studied business), but in business there is a "blue ocean strategy". The basic premise is, if you can provide a product for half the price, with the twice the value, you will destroy the incumbent. What AMD is doing is really insane in my opinion. I'm not sure if they are pricing their processors low on purpose and/or if they have found a way to manufacture cheaper and/or Intel was screwing consumers with their pricing since they were so dominate. No matter what, AMD is able to provide something that is measurably better and significantly cheaper than the incumbent, and if the blue ocean strategy holds, they should become the new incumbent in the near future.
- blattimwind 7y ago> What AMD is doing is really insane in my opinion. I'm not sure if they are pricing their processors low on purpose and/or if they have found a way to manufacture cheaper and/or Intel was screwing consumers with their pricing since they were so dominate. Both. AMD uses chiplets for higher yields compared to Intel's huge monolithic processors (HCC, XCC), which lowers costs, and Intel jacked prices up because they had a monopoly.
- exikyut 7y agoOooooh, and they can mix and match chiplets that pass progressively more stringent QC stages to build the various SKU classes. I like it!
- thesz 7y agoSmaller chips have better yield. As AMD's current chips are composed from several smaller ones (I believe two or three), each composite has better yield than one bigger of same real estate size. So yes, they figured out how to produce cheaper solutions.
- boulos 7y agoDisclosure: I work on Google Cloud. This has come up a few times, so I wanted to reiterate that these are the Zen2/Rome parts not the first generation “Naples” parts. We didn’t bother launching Naples for GCE, because (as you can see) Rome is a huge step up.
- Bluecobra 7y agoAre you using a custom CPU from AMD? I spun up a N2D instance and it's showing up an "Epyc 7B12" and I can't find any details about this CPU anywhere.
- 867-5309 7y agono pricing mentioned I was surprised to discover the other day that one of my VPSs had been upgraded from 1 old Xeon 26XX core to 2 EPYC cores. other stats unmetered 10Gb/s up/down, low latency A'dam location, 2GB RAM, SSD.. it even outperformed my i7-8700T in a single-core openSSL benchmark. most importantly it costs €3/mo I really can't see google competing with that
- Dontrememberit 7y agoWhich VPS?
- anderspitman 7y agoYeah that seems a little too good.
- WhiteOwlLion 7y agoThe pings times may not be as good to France (or Europe in general), but the bandwidth provisions are much more generous than the USA. They have peering agreements with other ISPs, so hopefully a lot of the transit of that bandwidth ends up being "free" to them. Even on a 100Mbps line, I was able to push 30TB a month, so it is possible if you there is enough demand for the data.
- 867-5309 7y agoScaleway
- e12e 7y agoI see 10gps listed at USD 569/month? https://www.scaleway.com/en/virtual-instances/general-purpose/ https://www.scaleway.com/en/virtual-instances/general-purpos...
- 867-5309 7y agoI think technically it's 1Gb/s but it must be on a 10Gb/s plane as it bursts at around 3Gb/s
- carbocation 7y agoAny idea when these will be available on the genomics pipeline API (now "Cloud Life Sciences" API)?
- tkinz27 7y agoIts really great to see more AMD options for cloud instances. Now I'm just waiting for more ARM architecture options. Not having to cross compile code (a1/m6g AWS instance types) has been very useful in my day to day job.
- Cyclenerd 7y agoGeekbench Multi Core Benchmarks: 1. n2-standard-16 (Intel Cascade Lake): https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1257619 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1257619 2. n2d-standard-16 (AMD EPYC): https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1257340 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1257340 3. n1-standard-16 (Intel Skylake): https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1257420 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1257420 Intel Cascade Lake is with a very small lead on 1st place. But AMD is with three-year commitment the cheapest option. Great to have a choice. Thx @cvallejo
- benbro 7y agoAMD EPYC has SHA hardware accelerations but in my test "openssl speed -evp sha1" is slower than "openssl speed sha1". Any idea why?